Latency w/ the Digi 002 & Imac 800

[a2zproductions]

I'm thinking of buying a NEW iMac with
the Digi 002. Is anyone running such a
setup. If so, can I expect better performance
Lantency wise than my Windows setup. I know
you can use the Low Latency setting, but the
setup in order to get reverb is a hassle,
even at 128 the latency when recording vocals
is unbearable.

Also, does anyone know the speed of the hard
drives in the new iMac? I would assume an
additional dedicated firewire drive would be
recommended...

Thanks,
Adrian

[BeachDog]

I have plans to make the same buy before the end of the month. My major concern is that the new iMac's have NO L3 cache. (not L2 cache, there is "256K on-chip level 2 cache at full processor speed")

Will the lack of L3 cache effect ANY aspect of the Pro Tools process?

Also, planning on a firewire HD for data. Why bottleneck the system with only one drive. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

[BradLyons]

Understand your monitoring is going to be done on the Digi002 itself, although you can also monitor all tracks on playback as well and input through the system if you so desire. Really the only way you will eliminate latency completely out of the picture is with a MIX or HD system. As for the new iMac's... you absolutely want to have an external firewire drive for several reasons, a few of those being stability and dependability. The previous iMac's were absolutely horrible computers for audio...but the new iMacs really are wonderful computers! They are fast and just look great (the LCD monitor). It's not that much more money to get a desktop machine. Now by the time you add a monitor, sure it's more money... but you also could substitute an internal ATA drive for an exteranl firewire drive although there still are real advantages to the external drives.

ProTools LE on the Mac v/s PC really isn't much of an issue these days as ProTools is rock-solid on either. But the differences really come down to the operating system and stability of the host computer itself. This is where Macs reign IMHO. The stuff just works, no worrying about what firewire card you have, what chipset on the MB, etc.... With that said, PC's certainly can be much faster when it comes to raw speed...but you have to ask yourself if it really is worth it or not.